Angel
by Lady Shaye
Summary: Rose reflects as she walks down the aisle...and it's not Jack. Which seems wrong. Rose/Jack. In honor of the one-hundredth anniversary. R.I.P. to all those that were lost on that fateful night.


Disclaimer: I don't own _Titanic_. Please. Not that awesome.

A/N: I literally started writing this at about 2:30 A.M. on April 15, 2012. I had (geekily) timed it so that, while I was watching _Titanic_, the ship would sink onscreen at exactly the same time that it did 100 years ago.

One hundred years...wow.

Anyway, then my Internet up and died, so I couldn't post it until now. Apologies. Enjoy.

Summary: Rose reflects as she walks down the aisle...and it's not Jack. Which seems _wrong_. Rose/Jack.

* * *

So much had happened. And in a way, she was still so young. Physically.

But mentally, she felt _old_. She felt like someone who had seen too much in altogether such a short amount of time, and in her heart she knew that was true. She had lived and loved and been left in less than a week. In only a few days, really, she had met her true love, fallen for him, and lost him to the icy Atlantic at approximately 2:20 A.M. on April 15th, 1912.

She wondered how often she would hear that date. How often she would hear the word _Titanic._ How often she would cry when it was brought up. Would she continue to keep crying, or would she slowly become numb toward it? Would she stop losing control one day?

Would she stop loving Jack one day?

_No_. The other answers were all unknowable, but she loved Jack with all of her heart and soul. Nothing could stop that. Not even her walk down the aisle.

There was no man to guide her, not one living family member. When she became Rose Dawson, she left all traces of her family and her rich life behind, and her soon-to-be-husband didn't have anyone in his family who could or would walk her down.

Her dress was white, and her hair was down, just like Jack had liked it.

She and her fiancé were _not_ in love. He had not expected love, and she had explained that she could never give it to him. At best, they had a sister-brother relationship. At worst, she couldn't speak to him. Entire nights of unsaid words, just bursting to be let out. She wanted to tell him—well, hell, maybe not him, but _someone_—about Jack and _Titanic_ and falling in love and Jack and loss and icy waters and _Jack_. She was dying to tell _somebody_. She needed to. But she couldn't.

The first thing she thought about when the preacher began speaking was that Jack should be beside her. But Jack was somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic, his body frozen by time and the frigid bottom of the ocean, and somewhere in the sea, she could still hear him calling for her. _Rose. Rose, don't do this. You promised to love me forever_, she could hear him speaking to her, though she knew, subconsciously, that Jack would have understood. It was just her own guilt calling out, making her hesitate as she made her way down the aisle.

She glided. Jack would have laughed at her if she had done that.

She let her fiancé take her hand in his. Jack would have asked for permission first.

She said, "I do," short and clipped. With Jack beside her, he would have been amorous and filled with passion and joy and she would have screamed her _I do_ to the heavens so that the entire world could know that she was marrying an angel sent to earth.

(But her angel had been sent back to heaven instead, and you can't marry the dead.)

She turned to face her fiancé and was disgusted by how perfect he was trying to look. With Jack, she wouldn't have cared if he was covered in ash and dirt. He would've been perfect anyway.

She gave him a chaste kiss when it was time. Jack wouldn't have let her do that. He would have grabbed the back of her head and pulled her to him, showing their love for the whole world to see.

Really, it had been such a short time that they had had together, living and loving and kissing and breathing. But she knew him better than she had ever known anyone, and he had known her better than anyone ever had.

It was time.

Rice pelted her back as she entered the car with her new husband. She tried to summon up a grin but couldn't, only allowing a tiny smile to cross her face when she thought of Jack. Jack would not have slicked back his hair for their wedding, as her new husband had. Jack had had beautiful hair. (It still hurt to think of him in the past tense.) Jack would not have grabbed her hand without her permission. (He would have asked politely and then kissed it, as he had just before he died.) Jack would have told her to sell the Heart of the Ocean, or to throw it away because of the bad memories. In truth, she did not keep it because of Cal. (She kept it because of Jack, and the sketch of her they had shared that she had never had a chance to truly look at, though she knew it was beautiful in the bottom of the ocean—not because of her being in the sketch, but because Jack had drawn it, and Jack's sketches were beautiful. Everything about Jack was—_had been_—beautiful.)

Maybe one day she would throw the Heart away, because no one deserved to actually _buy_ those memories—or at least, the physical representation of them. No one deserved to buy that pain and betrayal and hurt and death. She herself had promised she would never waer it again.

But for today, she was selfish, and she fingered the blue necklace at her throat. Just once. She would wear it just this once, on her wedding day, to remind her of what could have—what should have—been. She _should_ have been going on her honeymoon with Jack Dawson. She _should_ have been having the time of her life—still mourning the loss of hundreds, of course, but still happy beyond belief that she was with the love of her life, her forever lover, her eternal soulmate.

She should have been a lot of things. But she wasn't.

She allowed her husband to kiss her as he carried her across their new threshold. He was a good man, her new spouse, a truly good man in many senses of the word. He understood that she was incapable of loving him, and perhaps anyone else save her own future children—she simply knew she would love them—and he understood that she wanted to wear the sapphire necklace even when it clashed with her dress, and he understood that in a few months, the child she would bear would not be his.

In a few months, she would have a child. Perhaps a boy, perhaps a girl. A child that she would love with all of her heart. A child that she would cherish and shower with affection. A child that was the result of a few minutes in the middle of the night—the early morning, actually—in a rocking, steamy car, on the hold of the _Titanic_ before it sank.

A child with a dead father named Jack Dawson.

She wondered if it would be wrong to give the child the middle name of Jack. It didn't feel wrong; in fact, it felt right.

Her husband carried her to the bed, letting her change into her nightdress, and they crawled into bed, exhausted by the day's events. He had his own tragic past that she had not asked about, just as he had not asked about her past on the _Titanic_. So many things left unsaid. (She had so many things she never got to tell Jack, and there had been so many things he had never—would never have, could never have, now that he was dead—told her.

Rose slept. It would be months until she smiled again—as soon as she saw her child in her arms, and loved the child with all her heart—and it would be years until the burden of her memories was released. In many years, she would tell her story, finally—the story she had kept inside her for decades. It would be bursting by then, ready to spill forth past her lips and into the world and made real.

It would be decades until she went to bed and dreamed of Jack again, for this was her last dream of him for a good long while, but for now his kisses were hot and passionate yet somehow still slow and steamy and romantically hesitant, as though he thought she would say no. He always asked the same question: '_Are you sure_?' And she always told him yes. She dreamed of his lips on her throat, his mouth sucking and leaving bruises on her that she wanted more of, his hands on the back of her neck as he stroked her, his body against hers as they lay face-to-face in a bed together, a bed that would never exist for the two of them, and his hand in hers, and a life of what could have been.

(And when she dreamed of him again, over eighty years later, it was all the same.)

But for now, she slept. And dreamed of the love of her life.

In her dream, both she and Jack were smiling. Unconsciously, as she slept, her hand made its way to her stomach as she slept.

It was a boy.

Charles Jackson. That was his first and middle name. When he was sleeping, and he looked so much like Jack that it hurt, she called him Jack. He stirred and murmured when she called him by his real father's name, but he never woke up. She had a feeling that Jack would have been like that. Hard to awaken, but once he was awake, acting as though he'd drank coffee. Though she knew that Jack probably had never drunk coffee. He had already been hyper enough all on his own. Charlie was just like that.

Her son married a girl of his own, and had a daughter named Lizzy that she adored. She doted on Lizzy, and moved in with her son when her husband died, and then with her granddaughter when her son died. This girl, who was the granddaughter of two passengers of the _Titanic_. Lizzy never truly knew how well she was connected to that ship.

Rose never told anyone that her baby was Jack's. Only her husband had ever guessed, she assumed, though he never had said anything.

But she whispered it in _his_ ear in her last dream of him—just after she had thrown away the Heart, as he would have told her to do had he lived, just after she had gone to bed and never woken up—and kissed his throat.

And Jack, this real, true Jack, this Jack that was not a dream or a figment of her imagination or a sign that she had that disease of the mind called dementia, smiled. He smiled at her, whispered, '_I know_,' and kissed her again.

For less than an entire week of her life, she had been truly happy. After that, she had been devastated, her soul crushed, until her son had been born. Then, she was not truly happy, but she was able to get by.

Now, being on the _Titanic_ again, held in the arms of her soulmate, she felt her love for him strengthen, though it had never really weakened. It simply grew.

Their life could have been perfect. He could have survived and gone on the _Carpathia _with her and married her and raised his child with her and they could have died in their sleep together after telling the whole crew that had found the remains of the _Titanic_ about their story. They could have had a happy ending in every sense of the word, just as he had saved her in every way that a person could be saved.

But still. Wrapped in his arms, kissing him fiercely after so long without knowing his touch or his fiery passion for her, she felt her need for him grow.

They could have had everything. They got this eternal love—the kind that outlasted death—instead.

Jack held her tighter, pressed his lips against hers, arms wrapped around her as she threw her arms across his neck again, holding onto him for her life's—well, death's, really—worth, and he whispered past her lips the three words he had never said to her while he was alive, or while she was, though she had dreamed it many times between the time she got off the _Carpathia_ and the time that she married. (She had only ever dreamed of him once during her marriage, and that was her wedding night.)

He murmured _I love you_, breathed in slowly as though taking in the words. He decided he liked it and said it again, this time more loudly and more urgently. _I love you, Rose, so much. Rose, I love you._

They could have had something else, something where they lived happily ever after, together forever.

But instead, they had this, where their ending was truly happy and they did end up together forever, though a little unorthodox. In the end, she got what she wanted, and what he wanted. They both received what they needed—each other—despite the change of plans. Despite her years of pain and loss and grief, she had ended up with him in the end.

Kissing him for all she was worth, Rose found that she didn't mind the change so much.

* * *

A/N: I'm usually not the type to write that kind of stuff. I just really don't think my writing style fits _Titanic_ all that well...but it's your opinion that matters, not mine. Feel free to review to tell it to me. *winks, then starts working on another story* I have been on a creative-angsty-oneshot _HIGH_ lately. I don't know what it is! I just keep spitting them out like a machine at a factory designed to make fanfics. *sighs* Ah, what a place. I could live there...well, meh, probably not really. If it's just the machines that are working on it, then _moi_ wouldn't get to do anything, and then my creativeness would just up and die.

Not to mention, the factory probably wouldn't have any food.

So, now that I'm off _that_ ridiculous, useless, unrelated tangent, review! BTW, did you like my portrayal of Rose? I was unsure of it. I felt like I was making her sound too...I don't know. Off. OOC. Unsure of herself. Anyway. ...Meh. Review.


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